In recent years, the use of electronic money has become widespread. In electronic money, amount information called value is related to money value and fund settlement is performed by increasing or decreasing it.
FIG. 12 is a diagram for explaining an existing electronic money system.
An electronic money card 92 is an IC card owned by the user, and, on a built-in IC chip, the balance of value, an IC chip ID for identification of the IC chip, an electronic money number, and so forth are recorded. Moreover, a portable terminal 93, such as a mobile telephone, into which the IC chip is incorporated also exists.
A method for retaining value by the user's-side IC chip is called stored value type.
An asynchronous payment terminal 91 is installed in a store or the like and performs payment by value by performing short-distance radio communication with the IC chip of the electronic money card 92 or the portable terminal 93 and reducing the value balance stored in the IC chip.
The asynchronous payment terminal 91 completes the payment processing locally between the asynchronous payment terminal 91 and the IC chip of the user without connecting to an electronic money server 2 and stores the transaction history as log data.
Then, the asynchronous payment terminal 91 collectively transmits the log data to the electronic money server 2 later at regular or irregular intervals.
The reason why the asynchronous payment terminal 91 is called “asynchronous” is that the asynchronous payment terminal 91 completes the payment processing locally without being synchronous with the electronic money server 2.
At the time of application of this application, most of payment terminals disposed in member stores that can make payment by electronic money are asynchronous type payment terminals. This is because, for example, it is difficult to perform payment processing in real time by the electronic money server 2 by constantly connecting the electronic money server 2 and the payment terminal due to restrictions on the communication capacity of a network.
However, there has been a dramatic increase in the communication capacity of a network, and, as in a “server management type payment system” of Patent Document 1, a server management type system in which value is managed in a server and payment processing is performed on the server side has also emerged. It can be expected that, as the network infrastructure is improved, such a server management type system will become widespread in the future.
On the other hand, it is highly unlikely that the stored value type system, which is mainstream now, is immediately replaced by the server management type system, and it is believed that the stored value type system and the server management type system will coexist.
In this case, since it is believed that there will be an increase in the number of users who own both a stored value type payment means and a server management type payment means at the same time, creation of a payment mechanism in which consideration is given to the convenience of such users has been sought after.